Sound familiar? If you've been following the K-Beauty space, it should be. belif, LG's popular Korean brand, has a product with almost the exact same name which they sell in Sephora.

I attended a CEW K-Beauty event with speakers from Sephora, Glow Recipe, and Amore Pacific. You can read the recap here but one interesting takeaway was that Priya Venkatesh, VP/DMM Skincare & Hair of Sephora, mentioned that the reason why Korean beauty brand were doing so well in skincare is partly the innovative and interesting texture of their products (think gels, jellies, etc) and also the amazing adjectives they use in describing their products. She specifically called out the belif Moisturizing Bomb and Aqua Bomb as examples saying that they evoke a lot more visual and emotive elements in a customer. She's right - compared to a standard "intensive hydrating cream" a "Moisture Bomb" is better positioning.

This Garnier Moisture Bomb is a gel-based moisturizer so I imagine it has a similar texture to the belif Aqua Bomb. It's also hard to ignore the similarity of the names. Are there no trademark issues here? If you compare the images they also lifted the same concept of pouring hydration/water/moisture into the creative.

I wrote about how Benefit Cosmetics took "inspiration" from Laneige's Two Tone Lip Bar here and it's interesting to see how other mainstream and mass brands are taking pages out of the K-Beauty playbook and incorporating their winning formula into their own product lines.